Knicks Links: Can New York overcome injuries?

Howard Smith/US PRESSWIREJeremy Lin is still questionable for Wednesday's game against the Orlando Magic with a knee injury, but what isn't under dispute is his willingness to protect his own trademark. It turns out the young man from Harvard is very litigious.

Tonight's game against the Orlando Magic is the second in a very difficult stretch for the Knicks that includes a tough matchup in Atlanta against the Hawks, another game against Stan Van Gundy's squad, two games against the Chicago Bulls, the final game of the year against the Indiana Pacers and one last game against the Milwaukee Bucks.

But if New York is going to survive this stretch against four playoff teams and another squad that's hoping to take away its playoff spot, then interim coach Mike Woodson is going to need bodies.

Here's NJ.com's daily aggregation of Knicks news from around the Web. Naturally, this one is going to sound more like trip the the trainer's room:

• Could Amar'e Stoudemire use steroids to treat the bulging disc in his back? It's a possibility, writes Marc Berman of the New York Post: "The Knicks would be wise to have a conservative approach with ailing Amar’e Stoudemire and have him ready to go for the playoffs instead of rushing him back sooner, according to one medical expert on bulging disks... Stoudemire sought a second opinion Tuesday night in Miami after the Knicks announced Monday he would undergo non-surgical treatment and be out “indefinitely.’’ People familiar with the situation said having Stoudemire ready for Round 1, which begins at the end of April, is the club’s goal... Dr. Wellington Hsu , a back specialist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago who specializes in sports medicine, told The Post a common procedure to treat bulging disks for pro athletes is an epidural steroid injection in addition to oral anti-inflammatory medication."

• As for Jeremy Lin, the Post's Mark Hale quoted the point guard at a Steiner Sports event on Tuesday night on the subject: ""'I’m just making sure that I’m 100 percent pain-free before I come back,' Lin said at a Steiner Sports Q-and-A last night live-streamed on the Steiner Sports website. 'Just being cautious. Just being sure I don’t have to deal with this again sometime down the road.'"

• If Lin can't play, it's going to be important for backup point guard Baron Davis to limit his own turnovers, Berman wrote: "Davis likely will make another start tonight versus the Magic at the Garden as it appears Lin is leaning toward resting his knee for a second straight game... In his season-high 34 minutes, Davis had nine turnovers and shot 3-of-12 — many of them ill-advised shots. It was enough evidence he will be back to the bench soon... 'I didn’t think I had the best game of my career,' Davis said. 'It’s probably the worst game I’ve had since I’ve been here, since I’ve been playing. But it was good to get those type of minutes and to get out there and just extend myself.'"

• The Post's Peter Vecsey sounded the alarm bells over what could be a very uncertain future for Stoudemire. "If not this season, at the risk of overreacting, it figures to get progressively challenging in subsequent seasons. Should Stoudemire need (potential career-ending) lower-back surgery, then what? If robbed of his spring and suppleness, he’s reduced to being halfway human. It’s not as if what’s upstairs has ever gotten him over... Equally troubling is how inflexible the Knicks’ maneuverability will become should a diminished Stoudemire be unavailable intermittently or permanently... Either way, it will be virtually impossible to replace what he promises across the stats sheet with established quality. The Knicks already are over the salary cap for the next three seasons. Plus, Stoudemire is on the books for $65 million over that span. What’s more, they exhausted their lone amnesty exception for the duration of the new collective bargaining agreement when they released Chauncey Billups in order to sign Tyson Chandler."

• Along that same vein, Frank Isola of the New York Daily News gives a financial forecast on what the Knicks will owe Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony regardless of their health: "Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire are each scheduled to earn approximately $65 million over the final three years of their contracts, and there is nothing a bum knee or an aching back can do to prevent those lucrative checks from rolling in. You might even say the Knicks’ only recourse between now and July 1, 2015 is to keep their fingers crossed, the ice machines working and the medical staff on high alert."

• The Daily News' Mitch Lawrence wondered if the Knicks frontcourt trio is really all it was cracked up to be: "The condensed NBA season has been a league-wide war of attrition, and the Knicks are starting to lose it. The frontcourt was supposed to be the strength of the team, too. When the Knicks signed Tyson Chandler, Mike D’Antoni took a look at his new front line and called it the best in the NBA. Well, it was the highest-paid, with the three pocketing $50 million this season between them. But the best? In theory only, and then D’Antoni couldn’t get the Anthony-Stoudemire pairing to work any better than it worked last season when the Knicks were ousted in four games by the Celtics in the first round."

• Peter Botte of the Daily News quoted Lin saying he feels better than Monday at the Steiner Sports event: "'It’s day-to-day, so we’ll see how it goes, but it feels better than (Monday),' Lin said at a speaking engagement for Steiner Sports, with whom he has a memorabilia deal, in midtown Tuesday night. 'The guys have been working all season so they’ll be ready. We’ve had guys missing before and have been OK. That’s the beauty of depth and we have some... 'Hopefully now we can show it more than ever.'"

• The Knicks' comical side was on display at the Steiner Sports event, wrote Jake Appleman of The New York Times: "Lin called Novak 'probably the most underrated funny person on the team,' citing Novak’s unpredictability. Novak said only Lin thought he was funny. Then, as Shumpert picked at a fruit and cheese plate in the green room, Novak, who is from Wisconsin, chided him for cheese discrimination... On stage, Lin humorously went through Novak’s confusion on one of the team’s offensive sets, as Novak once mixed up a play called 'orange' and a play that other N.B.A. teams run called 'horns.' Novak got even by telling a tale of Lin and Landry Fields making incessant noise on the team plane while playing Monopoly on an iPad. Lin’s defense was that he kept landing on Park Place."

• A lot of people questioned why Lin would try to get "Linsanity" trademarked, and now we know why he did. Several legal marijuana shops in California have begun selling, "Linsanity," and the point guard's legal team has swung into action, Ron Dicker of the Huffington Post wrote: "Warning to marijuana shops selling Linsanity weed: Your buzzkill has arrived... Jeremy Lin's legal team has sent a flurry of cease-and-desist letters to medical marijuana dispensaries offering 'Linsanity' brand pot, and a few shops have already complied, a lawyer for the New York Knicks star told The Huffington Post on Wednesday... 'Their enthusiasm for Jeremy Lin got ahead of their understanding of the law,' said Pamela Deese of the Washington, D.C., firm Arent Fox."

• As Jared Zwerling of ESPNNewYork.com found out, Stoudemire had a special guest in the crowd for Saturday's win over the Detroit Pistons: "Nine-year-old Blake Appleton and Knicks forward Amare Stoudemire are both from Lake Wales, Fla. And thanks to Stoudemire, Appleton was able to sit courtside at Madison Square Garden when the Knicks routed the Pistons on Saturday night... Appleton is battling terminal brain cancer, which was diagnosed in 2008. In November, he decided to stop treatment because he wants to live pain-free for as long as possible... Appleton had always wanted to visit New York, and members of the Lake Wales community got together to pay for his family to travel to the Big Apple."